


Lavender & Silverlight

by mahuika



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Romance, halp this is the first thing i've written in years, how do i fanfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-31
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-03-20 14:28:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3653793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahuika/pseuds/mahuika
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke is not very good at making bath-time sexy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lavender & Silverlight

“I want to wash your hair.”

Fenris placed a finger on the page to mark his place, and looked up from his spot on the floor by the fire. He blinked at Hawke and lifted a hand to his hair, running it through his fingers. No, no blood. Or dirt. Or spider intestines, or twigs, or rum from the time Isabela tipped a flagon of it over his head (“oh look, you’re all _wet_. I’ll have to help you out of those clothes now. Oh. I am _such_ a giver.”) He raised an eyebrow at Hawke. “My…hair?”

“That’s the stuff. That big white mop; makes you look like a moody elven wizard.” Sprawled across her bed, folding paper darts out of missives from the Knight-Commander, Hawke grinned at him. She slowly moved her gaze to the washroom door and back again, and waggled her eyebrows. “Eh? How about it?”

“A wizard.”

“Pah,” she huffed, “are you going to repeat everything I’m saying _all_ night? Come on, it’ll be fun. Shared baths! Romance! It’s what people do. Stop frowning. No, stop it.” She made a move to get up and flapped her hands in his general direction, vaguely reminiscent of a sheepdog preparing to herd its flock to their destination.

Oh.

That was quite good. Fenris felt rather pleased with himself, and made a mental note to repeat his phrasing to Varric the next evening. And if he should happen to mention that it would go rather nicely into one of his books – collie dog-Hawke scurrying about the Wounded Coast, steering her motley troop to their adventures – well, the dwarf could hardly be faulted for having good taste.

He was pulled from his contributing author musings by the sight of Hawke’s bare feet coming into his line of vision, her toes curling and uncurling into the thick rug he was sitting on. He sighed, more wearily for effect than any real objection to her schemes, and closed his book. Chapter six of _The Complete Book Of Magisters And How To Avoid Them_ would have to wait. He tucked his feet underneath him and rose in one fluid motion, before rolling his shoulders and stretching out his back. “Why do you want to wash my hair? It’s clean.” He settled on forgoing the beginnings of a scowl when Hawke positively _beamed_ at him.

“You have nice hair. And like I said, it’ll be fun.” She slipped her hand into his and tugged him toward the washroom, her lips curling into a smile at the lyrium light that flickered up his arm, even now. “I hope I still have that effect on you when we’re old and grey,” she murmured, and stroked her thumb over the white-ridged scars on his knuckles. “Well, you’re halfway there already.”

“With the situations you find yourself in, I do not believe either of us likely to see it.” He meant it lightly, but there was something in the glance she gave him over her shoulder, the half-smile before she turned through the doorway, and he knew the thought wasn’t a stranger to her. He squeezed her hand. “So this plan of yours,” he said, coaxing her back to him, “it’s just to wash my hair?”

“Well,” Hawke grinned and turned to face him, began pulling on the buckles at his shoulders. “That’s what it starts with, and then there’s much frivolity and soap-sharing and all that malarkey, and then – _then,_ there’s very enjoyable, slippery wet bathtub sex. “

“You have my attention.” Fenris’s lips quirked into a smile and he caught her wrist in his hand.

“Pleased to hear it,” Hawke replied, and slipped her hand from his grasp to pull at the buttons on his jerkin. “And there’s a drain in the floor, so it doesn’t matter if we make a mess.”

Fenris eyed the tub with a growing mixture of interest and apprehension as Hawke relieved him of the rest of his clothing. “Perhaps some water is required, then.”

Hawke’s gaze flicked over her shoulder at the empty tub. “Right. Water. Forgot that. Was meant to mention it to Orana this afternoon. Wait – right there. I’ll be back before you know it!” She whirled on her heel and bounded out the door, leaving Fenris alone in the washroom, quite a bit colder than her hearth-warmed bedroom had been. “Hawke,” he called after her, “Hawke!” With no answer, he crossed his arms over his bare chest and stared sullenly at the tub.

Frivolity and merriment, indeed.

 

\- -

 

Fenris felt his misgivings proven, when he was sitting in Hawke’s small wooden tub, his knees drawn up to his chest, Hawke dipping her fingers into the scalding water at his back. “Maker, that’s _hot!”_ She complained, and yanked her hand back out. “How do you stand it?”

“It’s comfortable. The heat…hurts enough that I can’t feel the lyrium.”

“Hm,” she leaned over and pressed a swift kiss to his shoulder in acknowledgement. “Right. Coming in. Into the very hot water.” She groaned and put one foot in the tub. “I’m going to look like a blistered radish after this. You know, this tub is smaller than I thought it was.”

She shuffled down in the water behind Fenris and attempted to get her legs on either side of him. “Right, foot there; no, that’s your knee, sorry. Have you been eating more lately? There’s some sort of water displacement thing going on here…” Hawke muttered darkly to herself, and with a bit more shuffling and splashing, succeeded in her efforts at last. “There! Nice and comfy.”

“It’s cramped.” Fenris turned as much as he could to look back at her, and was rewarded with a sharp poke to his shoulder. “Shush, you’re ruining it.”

“It was ruined when you – “

“It’s _cosy._ Should I have bought candles? I should have bought candles.”

“Hawke.”

“Fenris.”

Hawke sighed, looped an arm around his waist and pulled him back to rest against her chest. “See, it’s not so bad. Naked cuddling _and_ you have more leg room.” Fenris reflexively rolled his hips against her. “Hm. I agree,” he murmured, and lifted a hand to tangle in her hair and pull her head down to his.

“Hah! Rising to the occasion, are we?” She laughed against his mouth and bumped her forehead gently against his own, bringing her hands to his neck and twining her fingers in the wet ends of his hair. “Eh, eh? _Rising –_ “

 _“Hawke.”_ He almost failed to keep the chuckle out of his voice.

“Oh, you’re no fun. If Isabela were here, she’d have appreciated it.”

“Don’t mention it to her. She’ll have ideas.”

Hawke laughed again, kissed the corner of his mouth and leant back. “This tub’s not big enough for three, anyway – _don’t_ say it,” she interjected, before he had the chance to open his mouth. “And stop distracting me. I’m washing your hair. Sex later.”

“The prospect of getting soap in my eyes is infinitely less pleasurable.” He replied drily, but relented. He softened back against her, one arm resting on his bent leg, the other trailing lazy ripples in the water. And it _was_ peaceful; the last glow of evening light settling heavily on the thick steam that hung around them, Hawke’s fingers tracing circles on his chest, carefully testing forward as they breached the lyrium lines and continuing when he made no move to stop her.

“This really doesn’t hurt, does it?” Then at his vague noise of affirmation, “we should do this more often then. For your sake of course, not mine. I…could get a bigger tub.”

“An amenable proposition.”

He felt Hawke laugh; a clear, sharp sound against his back like ringing glass, and his relative contentment was broken by her retrieving a round bar of pale purple soap from somewhere behind them and brandishing it in front of his face. “Look what I picked up at the market today! Do you know he tried to charge me half a sovereign? _Half_ a _sovereign?_ ‘It’s artisan,’ he said. ‘Bespoke,’ he said. I told him if he knocked off a few silver I’d call it as artisanal as he liked.”

“You have the coin. Why do you bother over the cost of a few silver?”

“It’s _my_ silver. Besides, that’s how rich people stay rich.”

“A fair point. It…smells like lavender.”

“It’s relaxing. Apparently chantry sisters use it to soothe the poor orphans.”

“That is an unappealing vision, Hawke.”

“Oh, _right._ No, never mind then, ignore that. It’s –“ She dipped the soap into the water and brought it to his head. “Stimulating. I’ve heard. Favoured by knights and dashing highwaymen! Maker’s breath, your hair is so _downy._ ”

Fenris snorted and tipped his head forward, allowing her fingers to catch up the hair at the nape of his neck. It was a pleasant sensation, the methodical motion of her hands through his hair, the heavy scent of lavender dulling his senses.

An excellent opportunity for an attack, he thought lazily, and pondered telling Hawke she should keep weapons in her washroom. He sunk his hands into the water in front of him, watching his lyrium markings glow like bones beneath the water. They seemed brighter than they were in the dimming room, and he turned his hands over to gaze at the markings on his palms, closing his fingers over them, trapping the light behind his fists like a cage. “You’re quiet, Hawke.”

“I’m trying to fight the urge to make you a beard with these suds. An elf with a beard! Imagine that.”

“I appreciate the endeavour.”

“You know,” Hawke continued, working his hair into a lather, “when we were quite little, my father would take us all to be bathed. To the river, or lake. Some places we had a bathtub. The twins were…very young. Small enough they could fit in an apple basket side by side. He’d boil bracken root to make soap, and when there was enough of it in my hair he’d lather it up and twist it into this big spike on top of my head, and I’d count how many seconds it took to fall over.”

She dropped the soap into the water somewhere the vicinity of his right elbow and grabbed fistfuls of his hair, swooping it up into spikes. “You look like a porcupine. Varric will be delighted.”

“Don’t mention this to the dwarf,” Fenris grimaced, turning back to frown at her as he gestured between them. One spike flopped forward over his eye. “He writes enough as it is.”

“Hm,” she murmured. “No fun at _all._ ” She made a half-lunge for the side of the tub, fossicking about on the tiled floor until she found a small wooden bucket. She dunked it under the water and then brought it up, tipping it unceremoniously over his head. Soap bubbles and water alike splashed from his shoulders into the bath, leaving his hair flattened to his scalp and dripping down his neck, clinging to his cheekbones like a badly shorn sheep.

“Pah! _Hawke!_ ” Fenris growled and pushed his bedraggled hair out of his eyes.

 _“Rinsing!”_ Hawke sang, grinning as she tossed the bucket back on the floor with a clatter.

He mustered up as much of a scowl as he could be bothered with. “ _Thank you_. Are you done?” He was still frowning at her, but his gaze slipped to the slope of her shoulder and the line of the water where it met the curve between her breasts. "I can think of other things I would rather be doing.”

“I’m sure you could,” she replied, her voice saccharine; scheming honey on a wasp’s barb. She brushed his hair back from his face and quickly kissed his forehead before he had the chance to turn his head. “Now, turn back around. Almost done.”

She produced a small bottle made of brown glass – where was she getting these from? – and waved it into his line of vision for an instant before tipping its contents onto her palm.

“What is that?”

“Cedar oil. I think. He said it was cedar oil. Do we get cedar trees in Kirkwall?”

“I do not know the tree species of the Free Marches well enough.”

“I’ll get you a book on them.” Hawke placed a hand on his shoulder to pull him gently against her, the now-purple water that was rippling around them heavily scented from the shrinking bar of soap that lay forgotten somewhere by her feet. She rubbed her palms together and began smoothing the oil over his hair, running her fingers from the roots through the ends. Fenris sighed, content rather than annoyed this time, and dropped his head back to rest on her shoulder. “You are a strange woman, Hawke.”

“Ooh, flattery. You’re very good at it.”

Fenris snorted and closed his eyes. “I do not mean it in offense.” His voice was soft and low, almost humming with satisfaction as she massaged her fingers in circles over his scalp. “You are…like no other I have ever met.”

“Even better.” She smiled against his hair and brought her hands behind his ears, resting her fingers on his neck and slipping her thumbs forward until she found the small hollows just above his ears. “You must mean my clever wit and my ravishing good looks.”

“Your modesty, also.” He made a noise in the back of his throat as Hawke circled her thumbs slowly. She smiled again, turned her nose into his hair and nudged his head gently with hers. The sky through her high, narrow windows was almost completely dark now, and the wet edges of Fenris’s hair glinted silver in the thin light.

“I used to bathe the cow,” Hawke murmured. “In Lothering.”

Fenris was silent, content to allow Hawke her ministrations as she continued. “Could never get her into the river, so I just used to throw buckets of water at her and hope they’d stick. I usually ended up soggier than she did.” She sighed and ran her thumb along the edge of his ear. It twitched a little, and she did it again. “I miss that cow…I don’t suppose I could keep a cow in Hightown.” A smile tugged at the corner of her lips and she curled her hand into his hair. “Well, all done. Time for – “

She stopped. Angled her head down to look at him.

“Aaand you’re asleep. _Perfect_.”

She poked ineffectually at his shoulder as he slept on, head tilted to the left just enough that his eyelashes would brush against her cheek if she turned her face to him. “Am I going to have to do this myself? You’re in the _way.”_ She huffed at the lack of response, but dipped her head so she could rest her forehead against his temple. She twined wet strands of white hair around her fingers. “It’s a good thing I’m terribly enamoured of you,” she said softly, and pressed her lips to his damp cheek.

“You sleep better in a bath than in a bed.”Hawke dropped her head back against the lip of the tub, one hand still tangled in his hair. The other sought out his hand beneath the water. She curled her fingers around his. “Wake up soon, though. I’m already wrinkling like an old prune. A sad, blistered radish-prune.”

She pulled their linked arms tighter around him, security more to herself than a sleeping elf, and shifted so she could curl her free leg around his. She could sleep like this, she thought, in this half-formed cage that kept two hearts from nightmares and Templars and evil.

Hawke closed her eyes.


End file.
